If this sounds like a scary concept to you then you are not alone. Solitude, in this modern technological age, can be at best impossible; at worst terrifying. Moreover, the world has confused ‘you time’ for ‘time to get stuff done’. In this article, TV.bed.com seems to suggest that you time is making a list, cleaning the house and going shopping… I am resisting the temptation to spend the rest of my time writing about how wrong this article is…

Why is genuine you time so important?

“We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart… and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together…. I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude.” —Helen Hayes

You Time allows you to understand yourself, trust your instincts, tap into your genuine needs and follow your intuition. The more time you spend with you, the better you will be at dealing with the world around you. You wouldn’t spend all day with a stranger, so why would you do the same with yourself?

Spending time with yourself allows your body to process all the connections and content thrown at you. We like to brush pain under the carpet but, by doing so, we are allowing this pain to fester inside us.

“All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.” – Jean de la Bruyere

So how do we carve out genuine time for ourselves?

Check in with yourself: My sister used to set an alarm every hour on the hour. When this alarm went off she had to look at what she was doing and question herself; what was she doing? Was it something she chose to do? Had she found anytime for herself in that hour? This made my sister more mindful and understanding of how she spent her day, allowing her to make small changes every hour.

Shut the door: We are now expected to communicate with everyone all the time; walk through a modern office to see how booths and cubicles have been replaced with open plan offices and casual meeting spaces. My husband gets his much needed time by taking himself to Foyles in Charing Cross whenever he wants to sit on his own but you can also get this time by simply shutting the door behind you and being in one space alone. Find a room in the house you rarely use, an empty meeting room or take my husband’s advice and find a bathroom (can you tell how much he values his own time?).

Be, don’t do: We have been trained to believe that success is based on accomplishment rather than acceptance but the value of simply being enables you to accomplish more in the long-term. So when you have shut the door just sit with yourself and revel in the nourishment of doing nothing. “Constantly being ‘on’ doesn’t give your brain a chance to rest and replenish itself,” Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psy.D. wrote in Psychology Today. “Being by yourself with no distractions gives you the chance to clear your mind, focus, and think more clearly. It’s an opportunity to revitalize your mind and body at the same time.”

So take some time today for YOU. Solitude isn’t something to be afraid of; it is good for you mentally, physically and emotionally.

Further reading:

Huffington Post

Why you must have time alone

I have just returned from a blissful week away in Kefalonia. The picture below was taken on the top of a hill looking down onto the beautiful Myrtos beach – one of the best beaches in the Med.

What you can’t see on the top of the hill is that the beach is pebbled. Whilst this makes getting in and out of the sea slightly less like Ursula Andress, barefoot walking is one of the easiest ways to give yourself your own reflexology treatment!

Our feet are full of reflex points, so by stimulating them through walking on sand, grass and even pebbles you are applying pressure to all the right places. You are essentially working on your body’s most sensitive areas without even realising it! You may notice that gradually you get better at walking on pebbles once you have spent enough time walking barefoot? So by getting your feet used to experiencing different mediums you are actually relaxing the feet, and therefore the body. And this also means being able to get out of the sea gracefully – even on a pebble beach!

For more information on why walking barefoot is surprisingly good for you – including reducing depression and relieving stress – visit MindBodyGreen and the article on going barefoot outside.

Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: Refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment. Watch his talk here. Andy Puddicombe talks at Ted Global.

You can also find inspiration for how to find those 10 mindful minutes on my Instagram Page. Just search for ReflexologyHouse or click here.

What interested me was not the standard heel warnings, although as a reflexologist I can really notice who crams their feet into too small too high heels everyday! What interested me was the recognition of our emotions on our long term health. Suddenly under ‘wearing the wrong bra’ and ‘drinking as much as men’ were the intuitive ‘habouring regrets’ and ‘putting themselves last’.

Our emotional state plays a much bigger role on our internal workings than we thought possible. Any negative emotional response can have a big impact on our hormonal balance and even affect how our organs work. Take stress at work for an example. When stress hits, your body goes into fight or flight mode. Adrenaline is released causing the whole of your body and mental capability to shut down whilst your heart works to ‘keep you alive’. It is a primitive function that works on the most primitive level, and should rarely be used on a day to day level. However, we are frequently playing with our hormonal levels to survive deadlines and social arrangements.

And the result? Pressure on the heart, a body full of hormones and our systems shutting down to ‘survive’.

The solution? Look after yourself. Understand that your external affects your internal, and vice versa. Eat well, live well and you will be well!

Britain faces a £30 billion bill to clean up rivers and water supplies contaminated by synthetic hormones from contraceptive pills, an article in The Observer said.

It is potentially a very important move – and will no doubt cause controversy with drugs firms.

3.5 million women in Britain take the contraceptive pill, something that has helped prevent pregnancy and in some cases helped regulate hormones and prevent acne. It has become a big part of our lives, but has its impact really been communicated properly?

We all know that what goes out our drains will eventually end up back in our taps, and this includes any hormones from our medication. The contraceptive pill contains ethinylestradiol (EE2), a chemical that can trigger gender mutation in fish, the male sperm production and thus drops in population. In a recent test in Canada this ingredient was shown to have a huge effect on the fish there. Moreover, researchers in Britain have found that 80% of the 50 water sites tested here contained noticeable levels of the chemical.

The solution? Many people are saying the £30 billion bill is a small price to pay, but pharmaceutical and water companies dispute the science, its link to humans and the cost involved. The most emotive response as been from Exeter University’s Professor Owen who said:

‘But do we want to wait until we see effects in humans, as we did with thalidomide, or do we act before harm is done?’

 What do you think?

To find out more about how reflexology can help support your hormonal balance and fertility, get in touch here. 

Albert Einstein told us back in the 1920’s that everything (including our bodies) is composed of energy.  We all have energy within our bodies that can be used, or abused, in different ways, and the energy created from our emotions and mental attitudes are said to run through our body’s cells, tissues and organs. One belief is that our energy is channeled through chakras in the body.

Chakra is a Sanskrit term meaning circle or wheel, and is the word used to describe the points from the base of the spine to the top of the head into one holistic system. Theories on chakras link the human body and mind into a body-mind relationship and through chakras we receive, transmit and process life energies. Thus, balancing the chakras will balance energy in the body that can be major contributors to physical pain and diseases. Chakra reflexology does exactly this – balancing chakras through unblocking the corresponding reflex points and therefore using the emotional to heal the physical.

Chakra reflexology is an interesting and powerful practice. Whether you believe in chakras and energy or not, it is a deeply relaxing and meditative treatment. It works on the particular reflex points that correspond with the endocrine system, thus helping with relaxation, anxiety and stress. It also uses new freedom and energy breathing techniques that give any recipient a deep feeling of relaxation.

If you would like to find out more, or book a consultation, get in touch here or via the contact form. 

From Monday to Friday ‘stressed’ is probably a common description of the average worker in London. And it is not just a word we would use for ourselves when deadlines are fast approaching and we have a busy commute to face and bills to pay when we get home. Just writing the words make me start to fret about my ‘things to do list’ for tomorrow.

Unfortunately stress has also become a sort of adrenaline that many busy London workers live off – it has fast become part of the working culture, and therefore very difficult to escape when we try to switch off. But what does stress really do to you, physically and mentally, and how can it – in the long term – actually kill you?

Firstly stress stimulates the fight or flight reflex, producing adrenalin. This reflex used to be put into practice when we were being chased by wild beasts, not our colleagues with deadlines. So actually our fight or flight is being put into use more often than necessary, and than it should be. This puts severe strain on the heart; as your heart beats faster your blood pressure increases, your arteries constrict and your immune system goes down as your body’s blood all rushes to the vital organs for ‘survival’. When stressed have you ever noticed that you literally cannot think? That is because all the blood has left your brain to be used elsewhere.

As this is happening, your adrenals pour out cortizone. This is released to reduce pain, but in large doses actually poisons the brain, causing memory loss and/or depression. In your other systems, your liver is fast producing glucose for energy, which in high doses can cause diabetes. Your digestive system shuts down, unable to absorb proper nutrients and causing malnutrition.

The body calls on fat reserves to be used as energy. This causes hardening of the arteries and narrowing of vessels, increasing the risk of heart disease.

That is huge amount of activity to take place every single day in the body. And as you can see, this activity is definitely not positive.

When you get stressed what should you do? Take a walk, breathe deeply for 5 minutes, walk up stairs or just take 10 minutes to relax and reflect. Reflexology also helps alleviate symptoms of stress by increasing blood circulation to all the organs in the body, stimulating the body’s own self healing process.

However, I believe that reflexology is much more than just your feet! Reflexology is a holistic treatment that looks at the entire body, lifestyle and diet to understand common mental and physical ailments and how they can be treated.

So this blog also covers news and information about current health and wellbeing issues; from stress to fertility, meditation to diet and lifestyle.

If you have any questions or want more information on a particular subject just get in touch here, and happy reading!